The Bethesda Blog offers details on recent indications that a settlement is at hand in the legal battle between Bethesda Softworks and Interplay over rights to make an MMORPG based on the Fallout franchise. According to this, Bethesda will pay Interplay $2 million, and Interplay no longer owns any Fallout rights aside from two more years of selling their three previous Fallout games:

Under the terms of the settlement, the license granted to Interplay to develop the Fallout MMO is null and void, and all rights granted to Interplay to develop a Fallout MMO revert back to Bethesda, effective immediately. Interplay has no ongoing right to use the Fallout brand or any Fallout intellectual property for any game development. ZeniMax will pay Interplay $2 million as consideration in the settlement, each party will bear its own costs of the litigation, and Bethesda will continue to own all Fallout intellectual property rights. Interplay will be permitted to continue to sell the original Fallout ®Tactics, Fallout® and Fallout® 2 PC games through December 2013, after which time all rights to market those games revert to and become the sole property of Bethesda. Under the original agreement pursuant to which Bethesda had acquired the Fallout property, Interplay was granted certain merchandising rights to sell those original Fallout games, but those merchandising rights will now expire on December 31, 2013.

The Skyrim engine has about as much in common with the previous engine as Quake 3 had with Quake 2.

Iterations based on each other?

Surely. I mean that's game development 101: don't throw away everything unless you HAVE to.

But the SAME engine?

no way.

Models are higher resolution; view distances are greater, load times are FAR FAR faster. Characters have more realistic motion and don't "freeze" when you talk to them...just to name a few.

Yes, it's bound by DirectX9, but that is to be expected, as the lead platform was the 360. And certainly a reason behind why the PS3 version is....lacking (like that's ever a surprise. Sony really needs to invest in software tools...theirs are an absolute joke by comparison to MS and Nintendo).

Parallax Abstraction wrote on Jan 10, 2012, 08:52:They continue to include mod tools because every game since Oblivion has been using the same 2006 edition of Gamebryo (despite the damned lie Todd Howard repeatedly told of Skyrim being an "all new in-house engine") and it's trivial for them to release them.

FYI, tools create data...that's all. It's entirely possible to have a completely different "engine" that utilizes the same asset data and thus works with the same mod tools.

Not saying that they are using a new engine, just that the ability to use existing mod tools from previous games doesn't necessarily prove they aren't.

Fair enough, I'll concede that. But yeah, from what I've read in forums and my own experiences with Skyrim, this is definitely still Gamebryo. Gamebryo's original creators went bankrupt and likely because of the license terms Bethesda had with them, they were able to appropriate the version of the engine they were using and just rename it (which is probably why they never updated beyond the Oblivion version). So it's really an "engine given an all new name, in house." This engine barely cuts it on current consoles though and it definitely won't on the next ones so at that point, I would imagine they'll either have to write a new engine or license something more recent.

^Drag0n^ wrote on Jan 9, 2012, 22:59:Dude, I'll white night any damn company that supports the modding community the way Bethesda does.

Never understood all the hate these guys get from some folks.

^D^

Enh, not so much. It's not like Bethsoft does this because they're pro-mod so much as they're cheap and it's much easier to get PC gamers to fix their PC games for them.

Yeah because they really need to even include mod tools at all. Isn't there some GW2 fansite that's missing you right now?

I dunno, isn't there some tin-foil hat wearing, Tea-party/Faux-News event you should be at right now? I mean this all just some vast left-wing conspiracy put forth by the liberal media anyway, right?

And no, I stand by my assertion that Bethsoft does this more for financial reasons than any sense of supporting PC gamers. If that were the case they'd make good ports in the first place.

And I'm the one wearing a tin foil hat. How many campaign promises has Obama kept? Gitmo still open, transparent presidency, working with the Republicans rather than blame them for everything, heck he's still blaming Bush 3+ years into his term. His international apologize for America tour, etc etc Faux indeed. Yes we can has turned into I'm going to do what I want the US Taxpayers can go fuck themselves.

Yes the only reason Bethsoft has mod tools is because they're lazy yep! Gods Cutter I thought you were just a troll before, but now I realize not only are you a troll but your a fucking idiot to boot

Parallax Abstraction wrote on Jan 10, 2012, 08:52:They continue to include mod tools because every game since Oblivion has been using the same 2006 edition of Gamebryo (despite the damned lie Todd Howard repeatedly told of Skyrim being an "all new in-house engine") and it's trivial for them to release them.

FYI, tools create data...that's all. It's entirely possible to have a completely different "engine" that utilizes the same asset data and thus works with the same mod tools.

Not saying that they are using a new engine, just that the ability to use existing mod tools from previous games doesn't necessarily prove they aren't.

Parallax Abstraction wrote on Jan 10, 2012, 08:52:They continue to include mod tools because every game since Oblivion has been using the same 2006 edition of Gamebryo (despite the damned lie Todd Howard repeatedly told of Skyrim being an "all new in-house engine") and it's trivial for them to release them. And as others said, this allows them to release afterthought PC ports with the same horrible UI because they know modders will fix it for them. I guarantee you, when the next generation of consoles finally forces them to start using a current engine, they'll probably forgo mod tools on the PC, or they'll release ones that are watered down in comparison.

Quite right, quite right... It would be an absurdity to think that anyone in that company advocates Bethesda's mod community support for all the right reasons.

^Drag0n^ wrote on Jan 9, 2012, 22:59:Dude, I'll white night any damn company that supports the modding community the way Bethesda does.

Never understood all the hate these guys get from some folks.

^D^

Enh, not so much. It's not like Bethsoft does this because they're pro-mod so much as they're cheap and it's much easier to get PC gamers to fix their PC games for them.

Yeah because they really need to even include mod tools at all. Isn't there some GW2 fansite that's missing you right now?

They continue to include mod tools because every game since Oblivion has been using the same 2006 edition of Gamebryo (despite the damned lie Todd Howard repeatedly told of Skyrim being an "all new in-house engine") and it's trivial for them to release them. And as others said, this allows them to release afterthought PC ports with the same horrible UI because they know modders will fix it for them. I guarantee you, when the next generation of consoles finally forces them to start using a current engine, they'll probably forgo mod tools on the PC, or they'll release ones that are watered down in comparison.

In a separate but related matter, Bethesda commenced a second action against a purported developer of the Fallout MMO, Masthead Studios [...]Under the MMO license granted to Interplay, Interplay was not permitted to sublicense any rights granted without the prior approval of Bethesda, approval which had never been requested or granted. [...]Masthead and Bethesda settled that second lawsuit on December 29, 2011. In the settlement, Masthead acknowledges it has no legal right to use any Fallout intellectual property[...]No payments were made by either party as part of this settlement.

So even IF interplay would have continued the lawsuit and somehow proved that they entered full time development (with a mere $1 million spent in 4 years for fallout MMO that would be hard to prove), they wouldn't have succeeded because they tried to sub contract out the work against the terms! LOLPlus with Masthead settling, any work they did couldn't be used anyway! Poor Masthead didn't get any monetary settlement, I wonder if they got any money up front from Interplay to start on fallout MMO, or if they just accepted a percentage of royalties. As soon as Masthead settled, Interplay had no chance in this lawsuit (assuming they had any chance at all to start with). That must be why they decided to settle for only $2 million. They probably ran to settle for anything ASAP after that. Which incidentally explains why they gave up the original fallout "trilogy" rights. Beth probably initially told them they weren't getting a dime.

I can't say I'm sorry to see fallout IP taken away from bulgarian studio masthead. They have exactly 1 credit to their name, a post apocalyptic MMO that failed at subscription model and is now F2P called Earthrise. An MMO that had pretty low reviews last I checked. It wouldn't have surprised me if they were just going to reskin a few things, call it fallout, and otherwise use the identical Earthrise game. Feel free to check Earthrise out if you want to see the depths that Interplay sunk to trying to get any random thing pushed out with the name of Fallout MMO.

Creston wrote on Jan 9, 2012, 22:17:Good. Interplay, take your 2 million bucks, buy a shitload of hookers and blow, then go away and die. Bye!

Cutter wrote on Jan 9, 2012, 19:53:Hah! Called it! I knew it was going to be less than 5 mil. I reckoned somewhere around the 2-3 million mark. So Herve and his bro get a mil each and can now fuckoff die and never darken gaming's doorway again.

I agree. They would have NEVER succeeded in court proving they had full time development with $1 million spent in 4 years on fallout MMO. And there was never any sign of the $30 million in funds they were supposed to have according to contract either. It would have reverted to beth anyway after a long court battle. But that court battle could have taken years, years in which interplay had to pay expensive lawyers. Interplay made the smart move settling, and Beth made the smart move in paying the $2 million (a small amount at this point, and to avoid all that time wasted).

If interplay honestly thought they could have won, they would have been stupid not to fight it all the way. I'm actually a little surprised that they gave up the original fallout rights. If you look at interplay's financials, thats pretty much the only area they still bring in money from, older titles. I think that indicates they were after a settlement all along from the day they started this legal stuff and were willing to give up anything to get a small cash payout.

I wonder if interplay will be holding firesales on steam for fallout "trilogy" before the deadline, or if they will just leave it at the current price.

^Drag0n^ wrote on Jan 9, 2012, 22:59:Dude, I'll white night any damn company that supports the modding community the way Bethesda does.

Never understood all the hate these guys get from some folks.

^D^

Enh, not so much. It's not like Bethsoft does this because they're pro-mod so much as they're cheap and it's much easier to get PC gamers to fix their PC games for them.

Yeah because they really need to even include mod tools at all. Isn't there some GW2 fansite that's missing you right now?

I dunno, isn't there some tin-foil hat wearing, Tea-party/Faux-News event you should be at right now? I mean this all just some vast left-wing conspiracy put forth by the liberal media anyway, right?

And no, I stand by my assertion that Bethsoft does this more for financial reasons than any sense of supporting PC gamers. If that were the case they'd make good ports in the first place.

Good ports to what? To the ps3? In my experience with Bethesda games, their ps3 ports are usually the worst of the 3. The pc is usually the best, post patch of course (but before mod). Maybe skyrim is different, but this was the case with the fallouts and oblivion. Besides, they had a reputation for technical issues long before their games were even on console. I don't know about pc being a primary platform or not, but they definitely support pc gamers more than most multi-platform companies do.

Cutter wrote on Jan 9, 2012, 23:55:Enh, not so much. It's not like Bethsoft does this because they're pro-mod so much as they're cheap and it's much easier to get PC gamers to fix their PC games for them.

This is just an incorrect statement, and one that you very well know is not true.There is significant fun and value to be had from Bethesda games, and the fact that their titles are very modder-friendly is a nice gesture towards PC gamers on their part.They could just... not have it moddable... like pretty much every other release these days.

2 million? Bethsoft & Interplay went through this whole mess over a ridiculous 2 million when the Fallout property is worth 50 times that?

Wouldnt it have been much easier for Bethsoft to approach Interplay and say "look, we changed our mind about the fallout MMO...we think we can make something amazing. Take this 15 mill to drop the licencing agreement". No doubt Bethsoft spent more than that on legal maneuvers.